Saturday, March 22, 2008

This Is The ESPN Tech Center And Pit Studio

Here are some pictures provided by our friends at ESPN of the infield Pit Studio and the Tech Center.

The Tech Center is brightly lit and contains both NASCAR equipment and graphic elements that can be accessed by touch screen on a main monitor. The cameras are hand-held and move with Tim Brewer to whatever element he is discussing.

The Pit Studio is mounted on a tractor-trailer frame and rises with a scissor-lift to a height needed to present a "background" behind the on-camera talent. You can clearly see the remotely operated cameras that move along a track on the ground.

These pictures also help viewers to see that six or seven hours in the Pit Studio suspended high above the ground is certainly an interesting assignment for the announcers.

If you have any questions about these pictures, please ask them in the comments section by clicking on the COMMENTS button below. Thanks again to the readers that asked for additional information about these two elements of the ESPN coverage, and to the ESPN PR staff for providing these images.

17 comments:

Ok this might be a silly question but how do you get in and out of the pit studio. Are there stairs or does it get lowered back down to the ground? I am assuming it doesn't have a break room and facilities and 6-7 hours is a long time to be "trapped" anywhere.

The trailer is lowered to the ground. You may remember AB mentioning recently that the Pit Center was on the ground because of lightning in the area, and that was why the background view was gone. Good question.

That is a great question. The cost of sending four folks to Bristol, CT by air vs. keeping the entire infield TV compound in place for one more day is not really going to allow the guys to stay on-site.

The teardown starts after the race and then the cycle starts again of travel, set and show.

This is the kind of coverage which has made your blog one of my top three most interesting and useful sites each week.

While I'm handing out kudos, you and your readers also deserve high marks for the intelligent and civil discourse. Comments on most sites are illiterate, nasty, and ignorant. Okay no more compliments lest I drift towards fulsome.